The first month of the year is wrapping up which means eleven more months to go. I’m not sure if it’s the pandemic or that I’m in my mid-twenties, working a job, and have been out of school for almost three years now but time seems to fly by way too fast. I blink and it’s the end of another month.
I think it’s so ironic that I’m at the stage of life where the stuff on my “adulthood” plate keeps filling up super fast and the available time I have to get to them is drastically decreasing.
That’s why I find it so important to make sure that I keep my life as organized as I can and make sure everything I set aside time for is from an intentional decision backed with reasoning that’ll benefit me now or in the future.
I always go into the new year with the most drive and passion to turn my life around but that vigor for self growth is never long lasting. The goals I set for myself in the early hours of January 1st don’t don’t feel as important and necessary on June 1st or even February 1st.
This year feels different. It’s almost February 1st and I’m not feeling burnt out from the new year high and I believe it’s the result from a couple of mindset changes.
Always Maintain Clarity
“You need to get clear on who you want to be before you can start planning your weeks to become the person that you want to be.”
- I heard this quote on muchelleb’s YouTube channel. This quote has been one of my favorites to look back to when I need some direction.
- Often times, when we set goals or tasks that we want to accomplish, we’re looking for quick fixes and solutions to things that aren’t working out for us. We don’t focus on the why, we focus on the end product. I personally believe this way of thinking feeds into the whole process vs final destination mindset. By reminding ourselves of the why, we’re constantly feeding ourselves the purpose behind our actions and we’ll be able to see if this goal is something that truly matters and if it’s something that’ll add value. If months down the line, you’re feeling a bit unmotivated, remembering the why will help you remember the reason behind your drive to achieve this goal. It’ll reignite some of that motivation you had when you started. From remembering and cultivating the why from the beginning of your self-growth/productivity journey, you’re going to be able to develop a more sustainable lifestyle that’ll be fueled with intention rather than instant gratification. Instant gratification is going to fill your hunger fast and leave you hungry again quickly. An intentional journey is going to keep you fueled enough to keep going for much longer than with instant gratification.
- Check out the video where muchelleb talks about the necessity of getting clarity and introduces viewers to some journaling activities and prompts that’ll help cultivate the definition of the why.
Progress in the Process
- I’m reminding myself to focus on the process not the final destination. In other words, we’re not in a competition with time to get things done as fast as humanly possible. We need to take our time with what we set out to do because things take time. The way we divide up time into weeks, months, and quarters is a perfect nod to the fact that we don’t have to measure progress based on whether we finished something in one day or quickly. If everything is meant to be accomplished or finalized perfectly in a sitting, we wouldn’t have a need for all these different ways to measure time. Quarters, months, weeks, and even days are all time measuring structures that are there to remind ourselves that we still have tomorrow to get things done.
It’s all about the process.
- Giving into the mindset of rushing through things and overwhelming ourselves to the point where we’re just ignoring our goals or tasks is a sign that we’re looking at the final destination and not the process. Instead, ask questions that highlight the intention behind the goal or task. Why am I doing this? As mentioned above, get some clarity. When you’re able to define why you want to achieve the goal/task at hand, you’ll be able to create reasonable action steps that build on top of each other but still maintain that foundational value of the why. Your action steps will become better suited to your work style and will allow you to achieve your goals/tasks with a little bit less resistance from trying to jump from 0 to a 100 real fast.
- Embrace the slip ups. If you make a weekly goal to get less take out but you end up eating out three times in a week, don’t beat yourself up! Next week, try to aim for two.
Making fast, quick, all or nothing changes as a quick solution to get to your final destination isn’t the way to go about achieving your goals or tasks. Simply put, it is not a sustainable lifestyle.
It’s about progress and not about how fast you can fix a problem. The perfect example of why we thrive better with a process focused life is how we developed and were raised as kids. Many schooling systems start us off in kindergarten, then first grade and so and so forth to twelfth grade. A first grader cannot perform academically at the level of a fifth grader. A freshman in high school cannot perform at the level of a freshmen in uni or college. If you didn’t go to school, then the same concept can apply to how you were raised or mentally and physically developed as a kid. A four year old isn’t expected to think or function like a twelve year old. We give grace and leniency to children but how come we don’t do the same for our adult selves? Why do we expect to handle and tackle hard things so fast when most of our childhood life has been so process focused in how we build up our understanding of the world, who we are, and what we want?
In conclusion, give yourself grace, there’s always tomorrow, and to remember to focus on the process. It’s all about small incremental steps.
Eat the Frog, Power Hour, Check In’s – Accountability with Grace
On that same note, don’t let giving yourself grace turn into an excuse to procrastinate out of fear and ignore the goal and tasks that are making you feel heavily overwhelmed.
- Eat the frog! This is a saying I overheard from muchelleb’s channel. Eating the frog is a way of saying, “do the thing that scares you”. Often times, productivity enthusiasts like muchelleb bring up the topic that sometimes, it’s best to eat the frog first when it comes to tackling your to do list. By doing the hard thing first, you’ll be able to get it off your mind and go in to the rest of the day or productivity sprint feeling more enthusiastic and excited to finish off the rest because now that you’ve got through the hard thing, how bad could it actually be to do the rest?
- If it’s too much for you to make it the first thing you tackle on your list, then that’s okay! Embrace this mentality when you’re going into a new week, month, or whichever time frame you plan for and make it a task during your power hour. I love the idea of having a power hour. I try to do one at least once a week where I do all or as many of the tasks I have on my admin list such as fixing that one chair with a loose leg or to take my car in for maintenance. If you dedicate your power hour to include checking off the hardest thing on your to do list that’s stressing you out, it’ll make the process a bit bearable because you’ve put a time limit of an hour to do it and it’s not on your brain as a to do item every day. Instead, it’s stashed away and scheduled for your weekly power hour.
- Keep yourself accountable. Give yourself grace but make sure that you try to do better next time. Like I said before, if your goal is to get less take out during the week and you ended up getting take out three times one week, aim for two next time. Do your best to not make it four.
- A way to hold yourself accountable is to set aside weekly goals. Ask yourself what worked last week? Keep doing that. What didn’t work? Write it down. Is this thing that didn’t work going to be detrimental to your overall long-term goal? Is it affecting your mental health? Make it a weekly goal!
- Like the power hour, schedule in time in the week to check the status of your weekly plan. Split the week into two sections, one from Monday to Wednesday and another from Thursday to Sunday. Prioritize tasks for the first half of the week, afterwards on Wednesday, sit down and see how you did. This doesn’t have to be a half an hour task. Spend two mins making note of what’s left to do and what you have done. A good bit of accountability is recognizing what you have accomplished and often times when it comes to to do lists, we focus more on the stuff we have written down that we haven’t done versus what’s not on the list that we have done.
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